


Scarlet Rose

by tokyoeye



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:46:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokyoeye/pseuds/tokyoeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "About a waiter who left you a rose in the bill. Do anything with this prompt. Go mad"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazily_astray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazily_astray/gifts).



> This is more of a personal piece of work rather than a fandom one. :)  
> I've always wanted to write a piece about war-time reunion and romance like this and with Anne's prompt, I though they quite fit together. Also, this is quite personal as it is one of my own "fantasies" so to speak. Hope you guys like it and comments are hugely appreciated!

There was a rose sitting quietly on the bill. She looked back at the waiter expectantly and her cheeks were blushed with peachy pink; dozens of fantasies rose all at once in her head, whispering the tales of romantic tragedies at times of war.

Could he be the one that would tie her with sentimental threads and keep her alive in the war? Could he be the one that turns out to be her star-crossed lover?

But the waiter coyly shook his head, tipping his head towards an empty table as he explained that it was “a gentleman over there that asked to bring you the rose when you’re finished”.

“Well where is he now?” She asked keenly with a trembling voice but answers were not fulfilled; hundreds more fantasies roaming to fill her anxious mind. She had been rather restless all night, absent-minded in her friends’ conversation, but she couldn’t be blamed.

It was a farewell dinner she was paying that night. She had enrolled in the Australia 125 Battalion as a psychiatrist.

 

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Lovely fanart by lazily-astray


	2. Chapter 2

She joined the army at first because she had learnt about the need for psychological counselling in the army and had always had too much sympathy for the soldiers suffering from traumas. She was just one of the whole team of psychologists that were enrolled for backups --- no one could really see that Australia would be involved in an actual war. 

But a war her country rushed into. And it was up to her to decide whether she would answer the call or not. 

Surprisingly, she did. It was not because she was stupid enough to be patronised into believing that war was all glorious and necessary. She hated every sound of the word. As a graduated history student, she had seen too much documentaries and wrote too many essays to have the slightest empathy for anyone engaging in the war. But the psychological impact those soldiers suffered had always been part of the motivation to study psychology. Boys that almost sleep-walked into the battlefield dreaming about the glory and the excitement of shooting other boys on the other side, as she had psychoanalysed them once, suffered the most in a way that no one could really understand. Colloquially speaking, it was like a good dream turned nightmare, except they would have lost the ability to wake up from it. 

So she said yes. Before she even touched the radius of war, she was already mentally consumed by the domestic fights with her parents that happened every freaking evening; she dared to say that her mom “persuaded” with every emotion that a human being could manipulate of.

She stayed with the troops; not in the centre of the fire of course, but still relatively close enough to hear the sound of bullets penetrating everything: soils, metal and human flesh. In the few days that she had lived in the base, she had seen death of every organism she could find there. The whole place stunk of death and decay and futility.

She had been assigned under a counselling officer, and had immediately tuned to work double shifts in the hospital. Ironically, her hospital had joined force with an English army’s makeshift aid and it offered her a pathetic little thread of warmth, connecting her with her long-lost homeland.


	3. Chapter 3

One day after a mass campaign in aggressive attack against the enemies, the hospital was roaming with bodies. Bodies that were both physically and mentally impaired. She was not briefed for the scene and the moment she smelled the sickening smell of iron she knew today would be the day that she finally needed to see her own counsellor at the end of the shift. Nurses whose uniform had turned crimson and soldiers whose uniform had turned crimson and everyone else who were wearing crimson were all moving around her, walking and running and crowding and shouting and crying and screaming and ordering around. The feeling of being overwhelmed and petrified of who she should attend first hit her like a brick in the head. She stood around forcing herself to look at the detached arms, the holed legs, the bloody eyes and the twisted faces; to hear the screaming, the cursing, the sobbing, and the yelling. The worst part was fear. The whole hospital was a sea of fear, drowning her bit by bit, suffocating her with the smell the noise the sight the every sickening presence of fear. That was the moment she realised that, right there, was what the whole set of thousand pages history textbook had been carelessly forgot to inform her, was what her psychology professors in the army training incapable of telling her.

Then came the moment she saw a lieutenant. She was immediately struck by the profile she caught a glimpse of among the chaos of movements. It was like the cliché of the movie---everything else became a blur, became noises and shadows of red, crimson scarlet coral red.  
Her ears ringing with blood rushing to her brain, her heart beating in the most vigorous way that only happened whenever she saw him, which was almost ten years ago. She felt dizzied and sick and her knees threatened to give out. But all did not keep her from staring at that profile. She was still like a rock that had stilled since the universe was created. Her brain attempted to take in all the information and emotions that had been stirred up but her heart screamed at her, telling her to flight, unable to decide towards or away. But she listened to neither. How could she, after ten years of angst and obsession? She kept staring like a vulture, her eyes like a magnet pulled towards the force, her being like a rock letting the fall of emotions plunge at her, until her head was pounding with pain and nimbleness.

She swallowed and the iron smell of blood caught her and dragged her back to her hospital. The lieutenant was still there, although his profile now shadowed by the circle of soldiers around him. His absolute concentration in engaging with his fellow soldier immediately brought her back to the days, when she was one of his “soldiers”, listening to him organise a group project in high school. Ten years later, neither of them had really changed. One keen on assertively gives and the other willingly receives.

He was the man that she had sworn never to willingly make contact again. He was the man that made her doubt her purpose of living and her power to detach herself from the feelings towards someone else. He was the man that made the most of the bitter sweet adolescent years. The unrequited love that she thought she would tell a tale of when she finally got over him. She never got the chance to, because she never really did get over him.

And now he was here. In the battlefield. _“I want to be a soldier when I grow up._ ” His voice struck her like the bell ringing in the church. Of course. Of course he became what he wanted to be. He was down-to-earth the most hardworking man with the most brilliant mind she had ever met, and inevitably fell in love with.  
So she turned around.

It was not right. It didn’t feel right. A hospital vacuuming all suffering and pain and anger and vengeance was the not right place for a reunion, let alone one that she had sacrificed her self-esteem to think about almost every day.

So she turned around and quickened her pace towards the first room where she knew there would be a human being desperate for help.


	4. Chapter 4

She never got the chance to see him again after she finished her shift that week. 

Another week passed without seeing him…

Another week…

And another week…

She had written so many different scenes in her head on their reunion she joked to herself about writing it all down once she got out of this place.   
Then one night she was woken up by a call for help. She rushed down to the dorm and saw a body squirming and trembling on a bed that was soaked red. The four weeks of experience granted her to thank god that the soldier’s suffering would end soon. So she edged closer to take the soldier’s hand with subconsciously.   
And that’s when she saw the face. 

Her neck stiffened and her throat tightened like someone had tied a thread around her and was pulling it with cruel force. The name she tried to say was choked back. And she started shaking uncontrollably like a butterfly’s wings shaking in the rain.   
One the bedside table, as she slipped onto the cold marbled floor with no tears but moans of pain, a delicate red rose was sitting quietly in a glass, petals shuddering by the force of her grief.


End file.
